India defends contribution of Indian skilled professionals

We shift our focus to U.S. now, Vice President J.D. Vance, who faced flak from all quarters over his description of H-1B visa workers as foreign indentured servants. He is now in damage control mode. Days after triggering outrage from Washington to New Delhi, now Vance has admitted his mistakes and tried to offer clarification. He says that his rhetoric may have been imperfect. In an attempt to defuse the outrage, Vance invoked his own family connections to India. He said he loves his mother-in-law, he loves his father-in-law who immigrated to the United States from South India. He also expressed pride in his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, who was born in the U.S. However, U.S. Vice President continued to defend the administration's approach on immigrants. He argued that the U.S. must welcome foreign professionals while protecting American workers. Vance claimed that companies should not replace existing employees with foreign hires, while asserting that suitable local talent is unavailable. Now, India had strongly rejected Vance's description of foreign professionals as indentured servants. He then even called the remark unwarranted and deeply offensive. The Indian External Affairs Ministry said such descriptions ignore the contribution of highly educated and skilled Indian professionals to the U.S. economy. H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire foreign professionals in specialty occupations, often in fields such as technology and engineering. But for some of these workers, the next step towards staying in the U.S. long term is an employment-based green card. That is where the Permanent Labour Certification Programme, or PERM, comes in. The controversy actually follows the Trump administration's decision earlier this month to suspend several companies from filing under the Permanent Labour Certification Programme, known as PERM. The programme is a key step in the employment-based green card process, allowing employers to sponsor eligible foreign workers for permanent residency. The list also includes major Indian firms as well. The companies affected include TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant, Microsoft and Capgemini. For more on this, we are being joined by Ravi Batra live from Manhattan. He is an eminent New York lawyer and chairman of National Advisory Council, South Asian Affairs. Welcome to Beyond World News One, Mr. Batra. this term, indentured servants, it has struck a nerve with Indians and migrants whose work helped build the American economy. And Vance now sees his rhetoric was imperfect, just imperfect. And India has called the language deeply offensive. Why explain the remark but not apologize? Well, explanation is a form of an apology. And since the United States and India are allies at every human being source, I think the matter should be allowed to pass on. The real issue is how much every Indian in India appreciates the United States, how much every Indian American in the United States makes America great. And those are the things we should focus on. Not everyone speaks perfectly. If even God's word, if it was perfect, it would be on one page. It would not take books and scripture books because words are imperfect. And J.D. Vance should be treated much more softly. He is married to Usha Vance. And Usha Vance herself is is a great american she clerked for chief justice john roberts and um so i think we should just let jd um give him an easy pass on this one this is not a hard pass it's an easy pass uh i think we need to focus on other things like um can we get additional help from India to continue to bolster Silicon Valley and our high-tech sector. I think there's a continuing role for that to be played. And as long as the relationship between the United States and India, on a people-to-people level, it's great. I think on a sovereign-to-sovereign level, I think it needs to catch up to the people-to-people level. Mr. Batra, we might try to give the Vice President an easy pass, but the reality in America is quite different, isn't it? An Illinois teenager has recently been arrested over an alleged plot potentially targeting a Hindu temple. Prosecutors say he expressed white supremacist views and talked about killing Indian people. And doesn't political rhetoric as this one risk normalizing the very hatred that leaders claim to oppose? How can leaders be claiming in such manner when the rhetoric and the environment of America is otherwise? I am, first of all, to consider a 19-year-old cashier at Taco Bell to represent every American is not only an overstatement, it's an ill-conceived exaggeration. On the other hand, the fact that a 19-year-old who is yet just beginning to become an adult already has this wrong view that he needs to kill people going in a house of worship. In this case, it would happen to be Hindus. But to kill people who are going to go pray to God to become better human beings, that's the problem. Luckily, the guns jammed and nobody got killed, so God was really being very protective of America as well as Indian Americans. but young Paparacus needs help uh and just because he needs help doesn't mean all of America needs help i would say to you something else and i i am of this view um you know there's an old saying when in rome do as the romans do um and it is a it's a special fact of America 250 to remember that in 1776, and by 1791, we had the Bill of Rights, the freedom of religion came here, and it is a gift of the 56 founders who created the Declaration of Independence. Every one of them was Christian, with the exception of one who was Catholic, who was also Christian, of course, Charles Carroll of Charleston. But I think we need to look at this differently. The event in Chicago should be like a patient getting a cold and it's time to go see the doctor. I think we need to see our doctor. What is it that we're doing as immigrants being here? You know, I left India when I was seven years old. It affects me. I'm concerned. Why is it that anybody, even young Paparacus, why would he consider uh any Hindu American to be a threat rather than an embellishment of America's greatness. Why I, I want to see every American think of an Indian American as one who embroiders the greatness of America makes it better, makes it bigger, makes it more lovable so if that's not occurring, I think that's a report card even from a young troubled paparazzi that we should not waste, it's an opportunity we should not waste and we should take this as a report card on even how a a person who needs perhaps some mental help, some mental um, you know hygiene help, of course some mental professional help to say maybe we have a problem, maybe we need to do something maybe before we build the next temple in America, maybe we should aid three or four Christian churches that are in financial trouble, maybe we should support them uh so that even they would appreciate that they're having uh Hindu Americans as neighbors and that these are great people, they are great Americans and there's no threat uh ever from a Hindu American I, I think that's the way we should be going uh racism and religious bigotry they have to be doctored they have to be addressed and solved not just in U.S. but worldwide, thank you so much for your time and for your insights Indeed. All the best. Bye-bye.